


in favour of compound solutions

by ilgaksu



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-01 19:19:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17249888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilgaksu/pseuds/ilgaksu
Summary: He doesn’t look in the direction of the doorway, doesn’t need to. He knows this voice. It had gotten into his head long before they drifted.





	in favour of compound solutions

**Author's Note:**

  * For [psychicwaffles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/psychicwaffles/gifts).



The war is over. For the first twenty hours of peace, Hermann Gottlieb sleeps. After all, being dead to the world is not the same as being dead; rest is its own kind of triumph. The Shatterdome celebrate around him, the sound of it intruding and receding and distant, somehow, through the film of exhaustion - almost watery, almost like being submerged.

It is a restless sleep. Behind sealed eyelids, Hermann lives a life that is not his. Having said that, it is does not feel unfamiliar. In his dreams, he is fifteen nineteen twenty three, gangly in a vintage Backstreet Boys shirt and too much hair gel, finding a soulmate in the study of genetics. He is six and ten and thirty, and he accepts another award, he has another panic attack in a private corner of some public bathroom, and his mother is very proud of him. 

None of this is unfamiliar. He knows that, with the absolute certainty of an equation. He has been in this place before. It’s just that last time, he was not a singular avatar. He was not experiencing the life of Dr. Newt Geiszler alone. 

When he finally wakes, he wanders along the strangely unattended corridors in search of something - strange, at least, until he hears the partying, still going, and remembers. Stumbling, unsteady, half awake and only half in his own body - his right mind - he looks up to find himself in their lab. The plural in the possessive pronoun he chooses does not escape it. It never has. 

Muscle memory, Hermann thinks, pleased as always to be able to reach for a logical explanation and pluck it out of the chaos, comforted by the simple human predictability of it. The contents of the lab are scattered asunder still - in the wake of having saved the world, everyone had been consumed by the ruckus and forgotten that, now they were sure the world would keep on turning a little longer, things ought to be cleaned up. 

Hermann tuts, just for the routine of it. He can feel himself smiling; a strange, hesitant, halfling thing on his face, somewhat brittle under the scrutiny of the fluorescent lights. Still, it holds. 

The war is over. He cleans. 

“Yup,” he hears, some time later, “Called it. Totally called it.” 

He doesn’t look in the direction of the doorway, doesn’t need to. He knows this voice. It had gotten into his head long before they drifted. 

“Who are the Backstreet Boys?” he asks, instead, and he hears Newt laugh, delightedly. 

“Yikes,” Newt replies. “Where on Earth did you hear about the Backstreet Boys?” 

“From you,” Hermann says, says it carefully, and continues to clean the chalk dust from his board. 

“Ah,” Newt has the grace to sound awkward, which is one way of phrasing it - but it works, and Hermann stands by it. He is graceful - in the sense of there’s an odd poetry to how utterly graceless he is. 

He hears rather than sees the point at which Newt steps across the chalk line on the floor, or what’s left it: it’s been smeared into unrecognisability. It doesn’t matter. It wasn’t a line that could have held much longer anyway. 

“So,” Newt begins, almost conversationally, “This is weird. It’s not just me, right? I’m not the only one finding this, like, totally, deeply weird? Like -” 

“It’s not just you,” Hermann interrupts, because he’s not really got enough patience to hold against Newt’s habit of unravelling like this and never really has. “I ought to have known you would insist on us discussing it.” 

“Well,” Newt tilts his head, considering Hermann, “Yeah? Kind of? What were you planning to do then?”

When he puts it like that -

“I’m not sure,” Hermann admits. Newt looks at him, chewing the inside of his cheek, and the look in his eyes is too - 

Hermann feels too seen. He moves, under the pretence of still cleaning, and puts one of the tables between them. The silence stretches on a little too long, like saltwater taffy pulled until snapping. Another memory that isn’t his. Hermann doesn’t think he’s ever had saltwater taffy in his entire life. He swallows down the phantom taste of sweetness. 

“Hey, so, you know - so I was thinking -” Newt shifts from foot to foot, looking a little stricken.

Hermann’s hit with a sense-memory of being in Newt’s body at seventeen, about to ask out his lab partner, and realises what’s happening before Newt opens his mouth. He has to tell himself to wait before accepting. It doesn’t look good to be too hasty. 

“Can I, like, take you to - you eat dinner, right?” 

“I eat dinner,” Hermann replies slowly. “I’ve been known to eat dinner. You’ve seen me eating dinner.” 

They’re both thinking of long nights - sore-eyed, chewing leftover takeout gone cold as dawn rises, trying to fix a world that felt beyond fixing. It’s strange, to have a twinned memory, to be able to know it from both sides of the same coin. 

“Yeah,” Newt counters, “Not the same thing.”

“You’re right,” Hermann agrees, amiably. He bites back a smile. “It’s not the same thing at all.” 

“Is that a yes?” Newt looks at him. “That’s a yes, right? I can take you to dinner?” 

“I mean, you _can._ You could. Whether you _may_ is another question, of course.” 

Hermann realises he’s smiling, a faint little thing, something that’s on his face entirely without permission. 

“You’re the worst,” Newt mutters. 

“Hyperbole.” 

“You’re a hyperbole.” 

“What you are,” Hermann decides, crisply, “is a person who’s taking me out to dinner.” 

Watching Newt catch up is more satisfying than it should be, but then it always has been. The smile breaks over his face like a wave: even as Hermann sees it coming over the horizon, he can’t stop it swallowing him. 

“I don’t know what’ll -” Newt stammers, regains some composure, begins again. “I don’t have a reservation yet.” 

“You have twelve hours,” Hermann says, and then says something else, something so out of character it’s truly as though he’s back in Newt’s body. He can see his own face in the reflection of Newt’s eyes, and that reminds me of where he is and who he is. 

The war is over. None of this is unfamiliar, not really. 

And he says: “Surprise me.” 


End file.
